For law enforcement · FusionTrace Certified
For law enforcement agencies and the people in them.Never a product.
FusionTrace Certified™ means that a person knows how a sealed package works and how its integrity can be checked, and has committed to handle it the right way. It is a course, an exam on the Standard, and a signed commitment. It is not an expert qualification. Certification never requires buying or using any product.
Certification is by invitation through the FusionTrace Academy™. The Steward scores every exam and issues every certificate.
Emergency
Someone in danger right now? Nothing here slows you down. Call the business; under the Standard it can release the record at once. Document the purpose and your authority as your jurisdiction's law and your agency's policy require.
What an agency receives
Only what a business released.
An agency receives only what a business released, checks it, and copies the business's case number into its own case management system. A system built to the Standard never collects a law enforcement agency's own case number. The agency keeps it in its own case management system and copies the business's case number into it. A system built to the Standard never holds an agency's investigative record.
Nothing is sold. A business decides, one request at a time, what it releases to a law enforcement agency. The agency sees a record only after a named person at the business approves its request. The release opens the record to the agency for 90 days, and every look in the system that holds it is logged. A copy the agency downloads is kept as long as the case and the law require, and a certified agency commits to log every access to it.
Under the Standard, a record is released only to a law enforcement agency, and only when the business says yes.
Certification is by invitation through the FusionTrace Academy. Access to the first implementation's agency portal is by invitation, one account per email address. The first implementation's conformance is addressed in The first implementation.
What an agency's map shows today.
In the first implementation, before a business approves a request, an agency's map shows each published record as a pin with its observation, for example "Weapon observed", its time and its area, with no images, plates, business names or addresses. A record's details appear only inside a record released to that agency, attributed to the business: "Type recorded by the business: Slip / fall."
Film No. 03
Built for the day you take the stand.
For detectives. The path from a request to a sealed package: the business decides, the release, and the seal check.
Why a busy agency would take this on
It protects three things.
Your case
They can check it themselves.
When the defense asks how you know a file has not changed since it was sealed, you hand them the method, and they can run the check themselves.
Your people
The record shows it.
Every request carries a name and a reason, and every look is logged, so when an investigator did it right, the record shows it.
Your community
Camera records stay a tool.
Every rule here answers a failure that has already cost the public's trust somewhere. Following it is how camera records from private property stay a tool your community accepts.
What certification requires
A person. Then the agency.
The investigator
An investigator becomes certified after the training, the exam and a signed attestation to the seven FusionTrace™ Canons. Patrol and evidence staff who only receive a package take one fifteen-minute module and the five-minute Canons; it does not certify them. Prosecutors get a twenty-minute briefing of their own.
The agency
An agency becomes certified when its head signs the commitment, it names an administrator, and the administrator and at least one investigator have completed certification. It is then listed in the public registry. The administrator answers for all of it, and audits the agency's requests.
FusionTrace Academy at academy.fusiontrace.io: the modules, the exam and the certificate.
- Seven short modules for investigatorsAbout 80 minutes, online, at your own pace, or in person or live online through a training organization. With the exam and the five-minute Canons, ending in the signed attestation, about two hours.
- Two more for administratorsThe administrator path, with a 15-minute add-on exam.
- Two hands-on stepsIn the first, a student runs the reference check on a demonstration package and types values only a run of it produces. The second is custody: keep the master, record its digest at receipt, and name both halves of the chain of custody, following your prosecutor's guidance and your jurisdiction's rules of evidence.
- The examThirty minutes on the Standard, supervised live by a proctor on video, scored the same way for every agency.
- The signed attestationEach investigator initials each of the seven FusionTrace Canons and signs, and reaffirms them every year. The agency head signs the agency commitment.
- The registryThe agency is listed with its status in the open: Certified, Suspended, Revoked or Expired.
What a certified agency commits to
In plain words.
These rules add to the law. Where the law requires more, the law governs. Where a rule conflicts with a law or a court order, the agency follows the law or the order, and tells the steward. Nothing in the Standard limits an agency's lawful authority, including in an emergency.
- Only certified investigators request a business's record through any system that seals to the Standard.One person, one account. Access ends when someone leaves or changes role.
- A real purpose and your authority, with every request."Investigation" is not a purpose. It is recorded with your name, and the request runs under the business's case number.
- The business approves, or legal process compels.A record is requested, never taken. One purpose per release.
- Share only with people working the same case in your jurisdiction, with the prosecutor, and with the court, and record every share.Disclosure the law requires, including discovery to the defense, is never a breach.
- No bulk export.Nothing from a package or a network goes into a database of faces, plates or people beyond the case.
- Log every access.When a business asks which of its records you hold, tell it within 30 days. A sealed case or an open investigation can delay the answer, in writing.
- A person makes every determination.Never a Similarity Check result alone.
- Keep a package as long as the case and the law require.Then destroy it, with a record.
- Report misuse, including your own.To your administrator or straight to the steward. Tell the business, unless the law forbids it. Nobody retaliates against the person who reported.
- Publish your agency's policy on camera records from private property.
Keeping it, and losing it.
Certification is kept by following these rules. It can be lost for a serious or repeated breach, or a refusal to cooperate with a review.
While a report is reviewed, a certification can be suspended, and that shows in the public registry at once. A suspension is a pause while the facts are reviewed. It is not a finding.
A suspension or a revocation can be appealed within 30 days, and people who took no part in the first decision decide it. No status, Suspended, Revoked or Expired, ever changes whether a package verifies.
Renewal
How long it lasts, and how it is kept.
- A person24 months, kept active by a 15-minute refresher each year, then the exam again.
- A trainerThe same, plus at least one course taught every 24 months.
- An agencyEvery 12 months, with a counts-only report and a signed audit statement.
- A new major version of the StandardThe update module within 90 days.
- A lapseReminders at 60 and 30 days, Expired the next day, and 90 days to restore.
FusionTrace Academy
Built by law enforcement. Taught by it.
He started in dispatch at eighteen, the seat where every case begins, and retired from the chief's office, the seat that answers for all of them: thirty years across dispatch, patrol, command and the chief's office. He will run the Academy as an institution: its standards, its agency relationships, and who it certifies.
Nearly three decades as a federal special agent, with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the DHS Office of Inspector General, where he retired. Fraud, child exploitation and internal investigations. He spent years investigating the investigators. He will lead the instruction and certify every Master Certified trainer.
Former agencies are listed as career history only. No government agency endorses the Standard.
Disclosure
The Standard is stewarded by Stephen Pales and Jim Cords, co-founders of BlueWave Technology, Inc., which builds software to it. Any vendor may build to the Standard, and every implementation, the first included, is held to the same rules. Stewardship will pass to an independent board, with a majority independent of any vendor, and with nonprofit organizations, law enforcement, prosecution and civil liberties among the first seats filled. No board exists today, and no date is set.
Agency inquiry
Tell us your agency is interested.
Certification is by invitation through the FusionTrace Academy. This form reaches a person at the publisher. Nothing you type is placed in a web address. Privacy says what a form sends.
- Write inTell us who you are and which agency you serve.
- CommitThe agency head signs the commitment and names an administrator.
- TrainThe administrator and at least one investigator complete the modules, the exam and the attestation.
- Be listedThe agency appears in the public registry with its status.